On 2/5/06, Roger Chrisman <roger(a)rogerchrisman.com> wrote:
Could anyone who feels with conviction that Mediawiki
is NOT a CMS,
please explain.
I don't. In fact, I believe very strongly that a wiki is indeed a
CMS.. since a wiki's primary purpose is to .. be a system to manage
content. However, some wikis do it in a "wiki way" and break the
common-sense rules found with the older CMS'.
Now it's that "wiki way" philosophical difference that sets a
"real-CMS" apart from the "wiki-CMS".
A "proper CMS" manages its content in the traditionally strict "I am
the management system, I am in charge" most especially with
permissions. It focuses on the _management_ part of CMS.
A "wiki CMS" merely plays host to its content in a loose "let me help
you put your content somewhere" most especially by allowing loginless
anonymous contribution. It focuses on the _content_ part of CMS.
Mediawiki is not a CMS in the traditional sense because it has not
been created with the kind of strict security model which a
traditional CMS would have. Even though there are roles and
permissions in MediaWiki (page locking, administrative pages) I
understand that there is no faith in the existing security to extend
it into CMS-like stuff like per-page unix style permissions.. like
what a "traditional CMS" would have.
So the easy way to explain mediawiki's stance is to say it's not a CMS.
Technically text files in a directory is a CMS.. technically mediawiki is a CMS.